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Female Officer fights wanted murderer over pistol

Jan 8, 2019

Before you read anything, please watch the above short video. It is very quick and you may miss something so please watch it two or three times if you need to. Volume warning, there's a good bit of screaming.

I was asked numerous times by fellow LEO's to post an article on this video, I don't want to post a second by second breakdown as there are four main concepts which need to be conveyed here.

1. Officer Safety - This is sometimes laughed at and disregarded, but this is something which should always be taken extremely seriously. I do not know the nature of the stop but there is a reason why every single stop has to be done in a particular way, there is always a possibility of violence. For those of us who are experienced LEO's and/or FTO's it is incumbent on us to teach proper officer safety and make sure its followed consistently. This is a clear failure of basic officer safety tactics. She is in line with a seated driver of a vehicle, not using A or B pillar as cover, standing at least a foot away and not following his hands with her light, at one point she bleaches her body camera which means she probably bleached herself as well. She's holding stuff in her hands, she's looking away, she never saw the gun coming from anywhere. This is what happens when a LEO is not trained properly during the FTO stage, her tactics here were non-existent.

2. Training - This falls primarily on the female officer involved, as it is her life that is on the line everyday, just like any other officer on duty at any given day. We are all responsible for our personal readiness, our safety is our primary responsibility and ignorance is no excuse. However, it does not absolve the commanders, training coordinators and supervisors in this female officer's department of responsibility. It is the direct responsibility of the commanders of any given police department that their officers are as trained as possible. This starts at initial qualification for employment, involves training programs, and continues throughout the entirety of an officer's career. If there is any issue in anyone of those steps there should either be remediation, serious retaining, reassignment of duties or dismissal from service. There is plenty of training which exists out there in various state/federal sanctioned methods and concepts which would have been applicable here. This is a serious failure on the part of the command staff of that department, they hold secondary responsibility. There is no lack of qualified instructors out there who teach the proper concepts, the fact there are police departments that do not take advantage of these highly qualified instructors is completely counter to logic and the ever-changing standard in the LE training world. Adherence to dogma causes what you saw in the above video.

3. Tools - We all need the right equipment for specific purposes. We need to understand why we need certain equipment, the training behind it and the applicable nature of said equipment as it applies to violence. In this particular situation, the female officer missed the draw of the gun and was able to catch it before the wanted murderer shot her, that is because they were both inside each other's reactionary gap. A blade placed strategically on the duty rig and/or the pocket, like the Amtacblades.com Northman blade, designed for discreet pocket carry would have been an instant game changer in this situation. Of course your tools are only as good as your training, a mixture of both is required to effectively survive a deadly force confrontation.

4. Violence - The female officer was clearly not comfortable with violence, this was extremely obvious the moment she started to scream at the top of her lungs, which was a manifestation of her cognitive dissonance. She could not believe someone pointed a pistol at her and that she had to fight against that person, for her life. She made statements like "I'll just leave" which is a further manifestation of her lack of confidence in her ability and non-understanding of violence. I know that people will say that she was just saying that so that she could get an upper hand, I do not believe that for a moment. Her scream, along with those statements of desperation were indicative of the materialization of her fear. Violence is not for everyone, as such, it needs to be properly accepted, understood, and expected so that instead of screaming and pleading there is an overwhelmingly instant violence of action response. Once the violence starts the time for screaming, pleading and talking is over, all that is left is for action, that was lacking here. It took another LEO to show up and put one round into the wanted murderer's head to save this female officer. LEO's should not depend on other LEO's to come and save them, citizens depend on LEO's to save them, if a LEO is completely dependent on other LEO's due to their own inability to have violent effect then they are ineffective as LEO's.